Vulpine Designs
by Racing the Sunrise
Summary: No one relises that I haven't been in control of my body for years. Makes me wonder how we can really function as a team. Oh well, master always told me to keep my power hidden...
1. Chapter 1

I know this is short; I just wanted some opinions on it.

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'This is the day, Kyuubi. Today, everything will change.'

'And what is so special about today?' The fox spoke through the bars keeping him locked back. He didn't hate his jailer; the boy promised too much fun for him to do that.

'Today I need a special one; it's the start of the chunin exams. Now, should it be like the rest or different?' The blonde turned in his chair to get a look at the fox. 'What do you think?'

'The usual should be used, someone may become suspicious otherwise.' The thirteen year old asked him this from time to time, but he always gave the same answer. He would rather fault on the side of caution then be caught.

'That is _sooo _boring. But necessary, I guess.'

'When will you take control? You've been in here with me for years now.'

'As soon as I feel it is needed, or I get orders to come out.' The real Naruto only took orders from one man, a man who taught him to make others and give them control. The adolescent then focused and formed a mental picture of his previous creation's looks and character. Using a mix of his chakra and the fox's to form the body, he was soon done. The body hung like puppet without strings until Naruto pooled chakra into his first two fingers and poked its head. The body jerked to life and looked around for its creator.

'_What are your orders?_' The voice was hollow and devoid of personality.

'You are to take over for the last design, it is weakening. Take his personality and do as it would do. Understood?'

'_Yes._'

'Then go.' The boy and demon watched as the body slowly walked out of the chamber and moved to substitute the last design. 'It will be exactly as the last one as soon as it eats it.'

'So what will you do now, sleep?'

'No, I think I will shuffle through the past designs' memories.'

'You think they may have come upon something that would interest your master?'

'None of the designs would have noticed it, but between the two of us, we will see every detail there is to see.' Then the creator leaned back in his chair and focused on pulling the memories from the pool of them in his mind. Their surroundings changed as he plunged into the past. The scenery stopped at the Hokage's office on the day one of the designs that been tricked into stealing the scroll of sealing. The movie played until Naruto froze the frame that showed the design jumping out of a window with the scroll.

'What is that light?'

'A secret door perhaps?' The two studied a wall that was behind the Hokage. Down on the floor, light could be seen going from a horizontal slit that ran for half the wall before it suddenly stopped.

'Master may want to know this, or at least find it interesting.'

'Can we sleep now?'

'Fine.' Naruto pulled out a memory of the skyline at midnight and froze the image. 'Maybe soon I can come out.'

'I can't sleep if you don't stop talking.'

'Goodnight Kyuubi.'

--

'What am I gonna do?' The design was panicking as he watched the clock slowly countdown to his doom. 'I can't answer a single one of these questions!' The design was starting to hyperventilate. Inside, Naruto and the fox were planning.

'Maybe you should have made that one smarter or slyer.'

'You're the one who told me to make it the same.' He closed his eyes and tried to come up with a way to get out of this mess. 'Hey fox, don't you gain knowledge from shadow clones?'

'Yes. Wait, where are you going?' Naruto had gotten up from his chair in the middle of the sealing chamber and had started to walk out. He turned back and faced the cage.

'I'm taking control for a while.' Kyuubi was surprised, but didn't say anything as the boy continued walking away.

'That boy hasn't left since the sune-ku was here. The kit finds it easier just to have his creations control the body for him. What changed his mind now?' Naruto walked until he came to a dead-end. On the back wall of this dead-end was a floor length mirror. He calmly put his hands up to the polished glass and pushed. Then he watched as the mirror pulled him even closer and absorbed him.

The design only felt a sharp pain before Naruto took control and the proctor that was watching him only saw the boy flinch. The jonin then saw him calmly raise his hand. 'What is he up to?'

"Excuse me, but I need to use the restroom."

The jonin sighed, "Fine, but I'll escort you."

"That sounds reasonable." His attitude caught Ibiki's attention. He had been enjoying watching the boy squirm for fifteen minutes.

'What changed? Now he is calm and collected, just a second ago, he was quaking in fear.'

Naruto slowed his pace until he was walking directly behind the proctor. He waited until just the right time to start his plan. "So do you have any family?"

"That's none of your business." Naruto could tell he hit a soft-spot.

"I was just wondering, because I've seen you go in and out bars before." 'Just a little further.'

"Shut it kid! I'm not gonna tell you anything!" The man then ignored the boy and refused to even watch him. Not that Naruto was complaining. Suddenly, he threw his arms up and over the jonin's head, wrapping the rope, which connected the two, around the startled man's neck and pulled hard. With a crack, his neck broke and the body fell.

'That was too easy.' Naruto drug the corpse into a side room and hid it under one of the desks. He then created five shadow clones; one to impersonate the proctor, the other four henged into some random chunin and left to find the answers to the questions in the library. As soon as the clones were gone, Naruto and the 'proctor' walked out of the room and headed back to the classroom. There, the proctor escorted him back to his seat and went back to his own seat. 'Everything went seamlessly. Perfect.'

Naruto only had to wait ten minutes for the first clone to dispel itself and the answer to the first, fifth, sixth, and seventh questions came into his head. Shaking off the brief headache he got, Naruto quickly wrote the answers down as fast as he could. The rest of the questions were answered by the time Ibiki called time on the first nine questions.

"Get ready for the tenth question." He let the words sink in and watched several people fidget in their seats. "And before we get to the question itself, I'm adding one more new rule." He was interrupted by a chunin who busted in and called for him to come out. "None of you brats better move, there are other proctors watching you still." Out in the hall, he faced the chunin and hoped this was worth the time.

"Ibiki-san, one of your proctors, Matsu-san is needed in the Hokage's office immediately."

"Okay, he can leave now." Ibiki stuck his head back in the room and called the proctor that led Naruto to the restroom out. "Matsu, you are to go with this man to the Hokage's office." With a nod, the two left. Ibiki walked back into the room and started to explain the last question and the added rules. Everyone but Naruto was paying attention.

'So how are you going to throw blame off of you for killing the proctor?'

'The man that called him out was a clone, so was the proctor. Both will disappear and none will be wiser.'

'What about the human, Ibiki?'

'Hopefully he will forget, but he has no evidence to do anything with.'

'He could tell the Hokage.'

'Who will do nothing because he has feelings for the designs.'

'How long were you thinking on this?'

'The whole time the clones were finding the information. I mentally told them the plan.'

Kyuubi chuckled. 'I love your plans.'

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AN: Please tell me if you have any questions, or concerns, or…I don't know! I'm just looking for opinions.

Ax


	2. Chapter 2

"Ok, get ready for the tenth question. And before we get to the question itself, I'm adding one more new rule." Ibiki smirked as he saw the chunin hopefuls' gaping mouths and eyes wide with disbelief. The only damper on his mood was the blonde sitting a few rows back. The boy had been freaking out during the first portion of the exam, but now he was sitting calmly with a calculating look on his face. It was unnerving to say the least.

'Why does he keep watching me? Does he suspect something?' Naruto was becoming annoyed with the proctor. He had been watching him for practically the whole time he had been writing the answers.

'Probably. You have been acting different then the designs, he can tell.' Naruto thought out his possible moves to fix his mistake, but he could only come up with one solution.

'I'll let the design take control.' Naruto didn't flinch as he fell backwards through the mirror of his mind, but the design twitched as it was given back control of the body. Ibiki noticed this movement, but brushed it off as jitters and turned to the rest of the genin.

"Let me explain this first, this rule is absolute. First, you must choose whether to accept the tenth question or not."

"Ch-choose?" Ibiki looked back over to the genin he had been observing for most of the exam. He was confused to see that the boy had under gone a complete change from calm and calculating to sweating profusely. The boy looked like he was about to have a mental break down.

"Yes, choose. If you reject the question and don't even try to answer it, you'll lose all of your points immediately and fail. If you'll remember, what happens when you lose all of you points? Oh, that's right; your teammates will fail along with you!" At this, the blonde began to sweat even more and his eyes seemed to become a little glassy. It looked as if he had gone into shock. Inside the design's barrowed mind, Naruto was racing to either fix the current cracks forming in the design or create a new one.

'It's breaking…' The large fox commented from behind the cage holding him in. He had never seen the boy this stressed. He found it hilarious.

'I know it's breaking! I just don't understand why! I spent weeks on this design and it's taken more stress than this before.' Naruto took another look at the design that was standing next to the current design in the center of the area between his chair and the cage. The old one was covered in minuscule cracks that run up and down its body. The new one was supposed to be its exact match, but in his hast to create it, this design had a head of black hair and green eyes. This was Naruto's third try at creating a design that would replace the cracking one. The mental stress of controlling the body was more than he remembered, and it was showing in his flawed attempts.

'You seem tired; is it that much trouble to control your own body?' the fox asked with a chuckle that rumbled the floor.

'Shut it! You're just jealous that you can't control a body. Physically, my body hasn't been training like I used to do with Jiro. That little maneuver with the proctor cost more than I thought it would.'

'Hehehe…did you strain something?'

'_Shut up_.' Kyuubi just chuckled, the boy sounded so funny when he wined.

'I think I figured out why the design is cracking. It was the stress of changing control with you and then suddenly getting it back.'

'I guess I'll have to take control again…' the boy walked off to find the mirror again. When he was back aware of his own actions again, Naruto used his sleeve to wipe the sweat off of his face and proceeded to take his jacket off. He was just in time to hear the part about not being able to take the test again. In the corner of his eye, Naruto could see that Sakura was about to raise her hand. 'What is she thinking?'

'She thinks you can't answer the question. She thinks she's doing you a favor.' A chuckle accompanied his words. 'Like you need that useless human's help.'

The thunk of a kunai stopped Sakura's hand from raising any farther. She stared if shock as her teammate picked up the kunai he had dropped on the top of his desk. "So, is that it? Are you done releasing you pitiful killing intent yet? This is getting boring." Naruto's words startled to proctor and genin badly, his teammates even more. His words were said with a tone that was both teasing and condescending at the same time. The rookie nine had never heard his talk like this.

"Don't be stupid; if you miss the question then you can't ever become a chunin. Does that not scare you?"

"Do you see those scars on my shoulders?" He motioned at his exposed skin. From the tops of his arms to the back of his neck, the skin was several shades lighter than the rest of his body. The pale patches of skin disappeared underneath his black undershirt. "I got these marks when I was four because I refused to run from people who were attacking me. I still to this day don't know what they poured on my shoulders that melted the skin, but I really don't care." His voice took an even lighter tone when he continued with, "I didn't run then, I won't run now." The whole group stared at his for some time before one of the proctors motioned to Ibiki to finish it.

"I commend you for your bravery. Well, no point in dragging this out…everyone left here, passes." His next words were drowned by a loud screeching sound that ended with an even louder snap. Naruto had bent the metal of his kunai until it snapped in half.

'All of this, killing the proctor, the design breaking, me taking control, was for nothing?!' Naruto forced down the wave of ire that boiled from his gut back with out a problem. The Kyuubi's anger was only a bucketful compared to the writhing mass of rage Naruto held within himself. "So the first nine questions were useless?" His voice wasn't playfully condescending this time. It was empty, flat, and cold; not an improvement in his teammates eyes.

"No, their purpose was to test your individual information gathering ability. Every rule and point served to make you clumsy, more likely to be caught. As a chunin, you need to be able to handle the mental strain of very stressful situations. They need to have a clear head while they are being pushed from all sides. You must also realize that everything is not what it seems to be and that any point in time, your reality may be turned inside out."

"But what does that have to do with the last question?" A suna nin asked from the back. Ibiki sighed, he rather liked working with clever people; they could work out the obvious without needing it spelled out to them.

"The painful choice of whether to risk it all or take the easy way out amply describes the life of a chunin. If you are given a choice of competing an almost impossible mission or refusing the mission , which would you choose? What if you are betrayed? What if you have wrong information? What if there is a spy in your group?" He pointed to Naruto, "Since you are so smart, what do you have to say about that?"

"If you have a story, make sure it is a whole one, with details close at hand. That is the difference between a successful lie and a dead spy. Spies are human as well, no matter how could they seem, they will eventually be found out." 'He knows!' Ibiki just frowned at him.

"That wasn't the answer I wan-" he has cut off by a large black object smashing through the window.

It unfurled and read, "Mitarashi Anko, proctor of the second exam!" in bright white letters. The woman standing in front of the banner counted heads and then turned to the scowling Ibiki. "78? Why did you pass 26 teams?"

"Maybe we just have an excellent batch this year."

"Whatever, now I'll have to cut them down even farther than the original half! I guess I'm always cleaning _your_ messes, aren't I Ibiki?"

* * *

_Well, this took forever……If you have any ideas for it, I could use the help! Thanks for reading!_

_DD_


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